After the Battle
by AmanitaMuscaria
Summary: Harry after the Battle of Hogwarts. Not DH compliant. Rated K because it's a bit dark and gory.


The battle had been long and hard. The day was nearly done, and dusk gave the shattered trees and rising wisps of smoke an eerie quality.  
The broken ground made Harry stumble a little, as his weary feet didn't lift enough to clear the kicked-up clods of earth.  
There were bodies here and there, bodies he didn't want to look at. He walked numbly through this scarred day, hoping it would fade to black soon.  
He didn't want to deal with it anymore.  
It felt like he'd spent his whole life in this very same field, broken and dying and dead.  
Who was dead? Who was left? Did it make any difference anyways?  
He couldn't bring himself to feel anything, nor see anything.  
His wand hung limply from his hand, and when he realised he was holding it, he looked at it with revulsion. But then, his hand had held his wand when he'd performed the deed, so he looked at his hand, too. It looked a stranger to him, like when you say a word too many times and, from a word familiar to you, it becomes a strange and awkward thing. So there was no point in throwing the wand from him, as he couldn't throw himself from him. He'd just have to learn to live with himself, so he might as well learn to live with his wand.  
A cold chill wind swept through the field, and shivering, he wondered what had become of the dementors. He wondered what happy memories he might dredge forth to repel a dementor now, and shuddered at the memory of his innocent, happy self when he'd found out he was a wizard.

He'd come to the edge of the forest, near Hagrid's hut - a smoking ruin now. He veered away, toward the forest. The dark beckoned him, promising to shield his eyes from the identifiable bits of bodies, the hands reaching up beseechingly in death, the legs no longer able to run. He didn't want to look at the heads, the faces. He didn't want to look at any of it.  
It was all horribly quiet.  
The din of the battle was long gone - the shouts and curses, the bellowing of the giants, the screech of dragons and thestrals.  
The almost subliminal thunder that made the whole body quake and shudder like the ground was quaking and shuddering under the assault of so many bent on violence. He could still feel it, the terrible brash battlefield bray.  
He rather thought he didn't want to hear anything, or see anything, for a very long time.  
Perhaps sleep - if it didn't involve dreams where he'd be seeing all the events of this altogether too long and neverending and incomprehensible day.

He felt something tap him on the shoulder, and shrugged it off. He needed no company on this long journey today. The tap on the shoulder came again, and, irritably, he turned, but there was nobody there.  
He was in amongst the trees of the forbidden forest - he had to laugh - nothing could be forbidden anymore, after the events of this day, and there was no one there. Just the trunks of the old trees, still standing, grey with holding witness to whatever they had seen in their lives.  
And he felt sorry for them; they could not leave, move away, they had to stay and look at whatever was placed before them. The thump on his shoulder came again, and he jerked back, away from the grey old oak he had been near. A foot hanging down had been swinging idly into his shoulder as he'd stood there.  
A foot which had some black cloth shirred almost like a decoration around its ankle, but otherwise was quite bare and a waxy yellowish-white.  
He didn't want to see, he didn't want to look up, to follow from the foot to the ankle with its clown's frill of black, to the bare calf.  
He didn't want to look further up the tree to its bare blasted lower branches supporting the scarecrow figure.  
He turned and retched into the scud of fallen, dried leaves. Then, swallowing hard, he made himself turn back to verify what he'd seen.  
The scarecrow figure, hung halfway up the tree in a posture that looked almost as if it had been caught mid-dance, was draped with tattered black remnants of cloth. The thin limbs and sallow, waxy skin might have belonged anyone, but the black greasy hair was unmistakable.  
He felt no triumph or joy to see his old enemy fallen.  
'Wingardium Leviosa' brought the body down from its perch.  
Then, working carefully and methodically, Harry straightened out the twisted limbs, closed the black eyes now gazing blankly, harmlessly at him, and covered him with his own cloak.  
He found the wand beneath the tree, and in some strange half-dream, tried 'Priori Incantatem'. The silver shimmer of 'Protego.  
Again?  
'Protego'  
And again?  
'Protego'  
And suddenly, Harry's legs gave way.

When they found him later, he was cold, but still alive.  
No one wanted to hear him babbling about Snape.  
They wanted to bear their hero high on their shoulders.

But he always kept the wand that had defeated Voldemort. 


End file.
